Archives for June, 2013

I have talked to many women who have been enmeshed in destructive relationships. They are often bright, attractive, talented people who do not understand the weird power that some men seem to be able to exert.

Sex addicts and most likely addicts in general have some growing up to do. They tend to be more emotionally immature than non-addicts. This is usually explained in terms of an attachment trauma or “relational” stress in childhood. This lack of appropriate support and direction from parents in childhood means that the person does not internalize appropriate emotional controls, that is they do not learn to control themselves from within.

Wouldn’t we all like a way to interpret our sexual fantasies? Where do they come from? What do they mean? Often sexual fantasies seem to take hold for no apparent reason. Their meaning seems like some kind of mysterious code that we could crack, as we do in dream interpretation.

If you ask someone to describe their most compelling sexual fantasies, especially a sex addict, you will find...

Certain concepts get entrenched in popular as well as professional psychology. They remain in common usage long after the field has come to a better or fuller understanding of the phenomenon. It seems to me that in becoming clichés these ideas prevent us from understanding the psychological processes involved and from approaching them in a truly constructive way. Here are some of the concepts that most obviously cause me trouble...

Simply put, men are objectified in terms of money in a way that parallels the sexual objectification of women. That is not to say that men are treated in the same exact way as women, or that men in society are disadvantaged in the same ways or to the same degree as women. But men can be treated as objects too.

George Zimmerman's behavior should be understood in terms of his psychological vulnerabilities rather than being dismissed as racist. He started life wanting to be a heroic figure like his father but never gained the emotional maturity or self-efficacy to make his fantasies come true. He is impulsive, insecure and seems to attempt to compensate for his low self-esteem in a variety of ways.